Michael Scott Hand

picks up stones, says they are diamonds
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  • Author Archives: Michael

    • 21122020

      Posted at 7:21 am by Michael, on December 21, 2020

      The red bauble hangs from the tree branch. We can see a young family in the reflection of the bauble; a family inverted and flickering. The bauble catches the light from a nearby fire, crackling in the hearth. The family are shadows sitting down together between the fire and the tree.

      The girl unwraps a present and clutches it excitedly to her chest–it is exactly what she asked for. The boy plays with his wooden car, rolling it back and forth upon the rug. Mother and father laugh as they exchange gifts with each other.

      The camera pans away from the tree. No longer are the family a mere reflection in flame, but solid colour. Warmth floods the room: warm tones, warm feelings. Discarded wrapping paper litters the floor. Reflective surfaces–drinking glasses, seeing glasses, eyes–catch the light of the flame.

      Still further away and we are standing outside. Something could touches us. It is a snowflake. They are striking the window of this cabin where it is forever Christmas and they are melting against the glass. Outside, standing in the snow, a man in heavy black boots is watching them. His clothes are all red, except for his sleeves with are edged with thick, white wool. He has a thick and a moustache and eyes that twinkle as he watches the family. He smiles.

      The camera pans back further and everything is lost in the snow. There is the sound of jingling bells. A sudden flash of light. Bulbs hum as they are switched on, blazing through the snow. The sign reads: Merry Christmas.

      It is an advertisement.

      Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments
    • Meandering Wastes – Memory Recursion 1

      Posted at 8:00 am by Michael, on December 17, 2020

      Across the dusty, distant wastes,
      The writer sets a meandering pace,
      Scratching words with fountain pen,
      He creates reality again.

      Posted in Poems | 0 Comments
    • Inspiration Strikes the Suburbs

      Posted at 8:52 am by Michael, on December 16, 2020
      Posted in Photographs | 0 Comments
    • Work on a Cosmology

      Posted at 8:44 am by Michael, on December 15, 2020

      I recently began working on a speculative cosmology. My strongest influence, so far, is the philosophy of Empedocles and his concept of the four classical elements (Air, Earth, Water, Fire) as well as the dualistic/opposed forces of Love and Strife. It is also influenced by Einstein’s theory of relativity and scientific theories of spacetime.

      This cosmology is, very much, a work in progress and these words and images are intended to be foundational rather than explanatory.

      Image one displays reality separated into three distinct layers. These layers may be described as follows (from top to bottom):

      Layer 1: The Grid
      This is the world of matter which “the living” inhabit. It is a structured, deterministic system of inconceivable complexity that arises from the existence of the lower layers of non-matter. This is primarily the domain of the four classical elements and the reality we see arises out of the combination of these forces in the form of chemical reactions.

      Layer 2: Styx
      This is the domain of darkness and death. This is primarily the domain of Strife. The souls of the dead arrive here after departing from The Grid, into ankle-deep water and soft sand. Many wander in this realm for an eternity until all their Self is absorbed into the waters of the Styx and, eventually, falls as ashes into the layer below. Others–those who Remember–will journey through the Styx towards the pillar of light at the centre: there the Styx becomes a Maelstrom of Memory as it rises to re-join the Grid. In this way, Knowing Reincarnation is possible and the memories of the past give literal rise to the future.

      Layer 3: Love
      This is the region of the Amplituhedron and of Love as an intangible force made tangible. I have depicted this region as a ruined and overgrown garden at the centre of which the Amplituhedron beats like the heart of all reality. It is impossible to reach the region of Love, except through total disintegration of the Self in the waters of the Styx; this process is also known as Forgetting. The falling ashes of those who have Forgotten maintain the growth of the garden–for although memories can fade Love never does: it is the ultimate, indestructible force. The garden feeds the Amplituhedron (heart) of this realm and through the very existence of Love, undying, the Column of Cause pierces through the Styx where it gives eternal (re)birth to the fundamental structure(s) of the Grid.

      In this alternate depiction: the forces of Love and Strife entwine themselves both around (and through) each other but also around the four classical elements. In this depiction it could rightly be assumed that the interior of the sphere is the reality that we know–the Grid and the exterior are the warped, incomprehensible regions of Love and Strife respectively.

      Posted in Drawings, Philosophy | 0 Comments
    • 14122020

      Posted at 8:08 am by Michael, on December 14, 2020

      I fade.

      Edaf I. Shot of coffee brings me back. Through countless millennia the mind races and that whoosh is the sound of time. Who will I be? Who will I be?

      The answer, of course, is: me. Yet still I fade.

      There is no cause for alarm. I cross the room and adjust an aerial. I come into focus. I try to pick something up but my hand passes through it; I am not here, this is a memory.

      Whoosh again. I am here now. I am sat before a scream and I am typing. The scream was blank but I fill it with words. I give voice and volume to the scream before I loose it across the horizon.

      Nobody will call the police. It’s not that they are used to people screaming, but they’re used to not caring. They’re used to shunting thoughts into that part of the brain that tells them it has nothing to do with them. It is right alongside damn fool, kids and what-was-that-I-thought-I-heard-something-but-now-it’s-quiet-it-must-have-been-my-imagination.

      But it’s nothing, of course. It wasn’t even a real scream. I just made it up with words. I doubt the neighbours even heard it. Originally it was supposed to be the word “screen”. It was a typo. A misfire of neurons.

      I fade.

      Edaf I. In and out of reality I step; between rooms of memory and illusion. And then I am Here Again and I am typing as I try to convey these sensations: words on a scream.

      Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments
    • 07122020

      Posted at 9:34 am by Michael, on December 7, 2020

      A thin line of light appears on the horizon. It reaches halfway up the sky. It is like the light that seeps through the edge of a door not set flush with the doorway. It is like some celestial mistake; off by millimetres.

      Everyone can see it. A man stands in the Outback looking for gold and he finds it, not beneath his feet but in the sky. Workers on a freight vessel crowd along the railings, pointing and shouting; and even the dolphins see it where they surge ahead before the ship. People in cities see it, except for when their view is obscured by a billboard or a sky-scraper. Poor people see it; rich people see it. What is it?

      It is a thin line of light upon the horizon. Like a crack in the sky except it is perfectly straight. Like a perfectly straight crack in the sky, like a seam. And the citizens evaluate it. Some say it is aliens, others say it is God. People on different sides of the planet compare photographs and try to triangulate its position.

      It is moving, they say, there is more than one beam of light, the say. There is not; but we will let them hold onto this comforting belief a while longer.

      It is not visible from space, they say. It is caused by a particular type of particle they say. An as-yet-undiscovered cloud of somethings in the upper atmosphere. It is a refraction of the light of the sun. It is like a rainbow. It is nothing that we understand, but we will. We’ve got our best men (and some women too) devoted to figuring it out.

      One country thinks they’ve found it and they send fighter jets that spiral into the ocean. What was the last thing they saw as they approached that beam of light in the sky? Nothing. Suddenly: it was behind them. They send research boats into the ocean. They perform all types of radio-spectroscopy. They align aerials and antennae and point them at the thing.

      It gives off no readings and no radiation. They cannot reach it. They cannot hear it. But they can see it and worse–so can Everyone. And Everyone wants answers. What is the light in the sky? Where did it come from? The sky is falling, some believe. This is only the first crack: soon there will be others.

      A church begins to worship the line. A mad man leads the church and makes up almost everything he says. The line is the face of God, he tells his worshippers. The line is a sign. That part, at least, he is correct about.

      And then? There is some international incident. A bomb goes off. There is an election. Another election. A political controversy. There is riots on the streets and the entire time the line is visible upon the horizon; but they are not fighting about the line, they have–in this moment–forgotten it.

      And so too does the rest of the world become accustomed to just having it there. Another thing we are yet to understand. It is just like a rainbow, they decide. And we all listen because it’s the closest thing we have to an explanation that makes sense. Sometimes there is a news story about it, but they become oddities and jokes.

      Human history continues to unfold, with that mysterious line on the horizon. People shop, people fight, the Church of the Line fractures and three others spring up, each more obscure in their beliefs than the first. They do not receive so many new members any more. The line, it seems, has lost its allure.

      And yet, the line remains.

      Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments
    • A Man Observes A Red Orb

      Posted at 7:58 am by Michael, on December 4, 2020
      Posted in Drawings | 0 Comments
    • 30112020

      Posted at 9:05 am by Michael, on November 30, 2020

      Once I was finished, I put the pen-scribbled pages away. I arranged my pens in a cracked mug that I don’t want to throw away. I collected up the cables that seemed to have bred around my computer like snakes.

      Clean space.

      I pushed things back and forth and placed loose objects in boxes and loose boxes in yet larger boxes. I pushed the boxes flush against one another, or stacked them where needs be. I dusted and I polished everything until it gleamed.

      Clean place.

      I placed a mascot on one side of me and a God upon the other. The faces of necessity watching over me. But otherwise this place is clean, the space is clean just like tabula rasa.

      Clean grace.

      In the death throes of its freedom an old project slips away from me. But henceforth I am unchained without needing a lobotomy. And the blankness is appealing, in its way.

      I think… I’ll stay. I’m sure I’ll find a way to fill more pages with the things I have to say. And as shadows shrink away from me I’m content in my own way.

      But there is no place that’s truly clean: except where astronauts float between the stars. My thoughts like liquid filtered through a cheesecloth into old, repurposed jars.

      Already things encroach upon this space: a phone, sunglasses, a steaming cup of joe. And already things encroach upon my mind: string-puppets lurch and dance as they perform an old, familiar show. And as the earth turns round the sun, those shrunken shadows loom and grow.

      The cursor blinks: the blank page is a garden waiting for the seeds I’m yet to sow.

      And so, this is a beginning–not the first and not the last. A beginning captured through a pane of deeply-polished glass. So brilliant is the window that you yet can’t see inside.

      Instead, you see your own face staring back at you and from yourself you cannot hide. Believe me… I have tried. The oceans ebb and flow with the tears that I have cried.

      A fish inhales molecules rejected by my eyes. And upon a distant ocean a sea-captain surveys the skies. What day is this? What ocean? What fish?

      A hope, a wish, a spinning reel. When the machine announces JACKPOT tell me then: how will you feel?

      Is this about you, or me, or the fish? I cannot tell.

      Oh well.

      A well: a bucket on a rope descends into the darkness. For the bucket life is nothing more than un-ending katabasis. But each time it is dragged up familiar reflections yet return, a face upon the water. Is it mine, or is it yours?

      No matter; the water from the bucket feeds the garden and the seeds that we have sown.

      Let’s return to this place later to see what plants have grown.

      Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments
    • FishBowlHead

      Posted at 8:20 am by Michael, on November 26, 2020

      Original character early concept.

      Posted in Drawings | 0 Comments
    • 23112020

      Posted at 7:41 am by Michael, on November 23, 2020

      It’s all about perspective.

      Consider: a cookie jar left unattended on top of a bench. A stool is dragged over. A small figure climbs atop it and reaches for the jar. They grapple with the lid, they open the lid, they steal a cookie.

      Hurrah for the child who stole the cookie, we might say. Hurrah.

      But to the parent who enters the room to behold their eldest teetering precipitously on the edge of a stool and reaching for a cookie–a cookie–the situation may appear different.

      It’s all about perspective.

      Snatch the cookie and run, little one. And of course that’s what happens. Dextrous as a monkey the child steals the cookie, leaps away before the stool falls and scampers away from the yelling parent.

      Hurrah, we say. Hurrah. Nobody was hurt and a cookie was obtained.

      But what if the cookie jar had fallen? Shattered glass and crumbled biscuits. Now there is no cookies for anyone.

      It’s all about perspective.

      What if the child had fallen? A sob, an embrace a lesson learned?

      What if the child had fallen badly? A young bone snaps. The parent does not just see it happen but they hear it. Now we’re in a horror. The parent bundles up the wailing child and takes them to the hospital; the cookie jar is forgotten.

      It’s all about perspective.

      When the child who stole the cookie sits outside to eat it and sneers at the kid next door who doesn’t get to eat cookies much. Villain! We cry. Oh, villainous child.

      But what if the cookie was shared? Broken into two at least roughly equal pieces and eaten together in secret? What a bond these children have, we’d say. What purity of spirit.

      It’s all about perspective.

      An ant navigates a maze of broken glass and cookie crumbs; a parent enters into a room; a kitchen stool teeters against gravity, frozen suddenly in time and used as an example in a physics textbook.

      The students mull it over: how heavy is the child? How heavy is the stool? What level of surface tension does the linoleum provide? The cookie jar is forgotten. The cookie jar is not important. Is the cookie jar important?

      It’s all about perspective.

      Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments
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